Technology Addictions and the Link to Substance Abuse

The Problem:

Addiction is a positive urge thwarted by negative circumstances. Almost all habitual substance users are searching for a means of dealing with psychological stress that is usually associated with childhood and adolescent development.

The addict is drawn to a culture which promises to complete the unfinished impulses of childhood and adolescence. The cultures of technology are sufficiently broad as to offer the psychological rewards of all the cultures of substance use combined.

Technologies are cultures and not simply tools. Geeks, gamers, technophobes, phreaks, demosceners, nerds, hackers, cyberathletes, newbies, crackers: these terms and many others describe technological cultures that have evolved within the context of telephone, television, and computer technologies.

Such cultures share both the positive and negative aspects common to cultures in general. Positive benefits include group identity and cohesion, collaborative activity, and interpersonal connection. Negative consequences include potential addiction, isolation, and diversion from self-care and relationships.

Technology addictions obey the same principles as substance addictions; that is to say, technology addictions involve uncompleted impulses and fractured imprinting typically derived from childhood experience (this is not universally the case, but is almost universally the case). The addictive behavior completes, temporarily, unfinished developmental themes. Those themes might be (arbitrarily) grouped under four basic types:

• Flight response substances (e.g. hallucinogens) allow one to retreat into the imagination;
• Freeze response substances (e.g. opiates) enable stillness and solace;
• Orienting response substances (e.g. stimulants) encourage action and exploration;
• Fight response substances (e.g. alcohol) enable the illusion of empowerment.

The more childhood difficulty an individual experiences, the more likely the individual is to seek multiple substances in adolescence. This is because adolescence is the period of developmental correction and integration, during which earlier imprinting is revisited and reconsidered (instinctively).

As with substance addictions, technology addictions temporarily complete and fulfill fragmented developmental imprinting:

• Flight response technologies (e.g. fantasy video games and online worlds) allow one to retreat into the imagination;
• Freeze response technologies (e.g. television) enable stillness and solace;
• Orienting response technologies (e.g. strategy video games and social networking) stimulate action and exploration;
• Fight response technologies (e.g. violent video games) enable the illusion of empowerment.

The more childhood difficulty an individual experiences, the more likely the individual is to seek multiple technologies in adolescence. Adolescence begins with the brain pruning stage at roughly age eleven and continues until the end of the twenties. Because this long period of development involves the integration of previous developmental stages, incomplete or fragmented childhood imprinting re-emerges as adolescent psychological difficulty. Addiction is one method of easing the stress of such unfinished imprinting -- by completing it temporarily.

Solutions?

Modern humans have been around for perhaps as long as 100,000 years. We have been using screen-time technologies for about a decade (with the exception of television, which has been part of the Western lifestyle for slightly longer).

We are animals. Our well-being depends upon bodily movement, expression, and integration. This is what both current and ancestral research consistently demonstrates: our relationship with our own bodies is central to every aspect of our development.

Obesity, ADHD, cancer, diabetes, addictions of all kinds, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, trauma: all of these challenges are consistently correlated with diet and exercise. In fact, healthy diet and exercise are the only two factors that are almost always linked to improvement across the domains of health and wellness.

And yet, in Psychology and Counselling we remain seated in chairs, and we seem content to explore insight and the inner life. That's fine; but insight alone cannot heal the fractured nervous system. Only movement and physical challenge can do that. With the average Canadian youth already seated in a chair and watching a screen for more than 40 hours per week, more chair-sitting seems like a poor idea.

The key to health and wellness is dependable adult mentorship. The only way for an adolescent to develop integration, containment, and identity is through mentorship.

The impulse of kids to form groups is healthy. In evolutionary terms, groups of young people seek leadership from adult mentors. In the absence of healthy adult mentors, adolescents form a youth gang, which comes to be led by the adolescent among them who is most aggressive, gregarious, or risk-prone.

The absence of mentorship for adolescents is the most serious problem in our society today. Absence of mentorship is a primary cause of the addictions problem among both youth and adults, the suicidep problem among youth, the homelessness problem in youth and adults, and the depression and anxiety problem of many people.

Technology addictions involve false mentorship.

For more (much more) on this topic, visit the Technology Addictions Presentation page. For practical solutions and ideas, see the mentorship guide.